Watching the news tonight with the top news item being the tornado in Oklahoma City. They are reporting the death toll at 91, with 20 of the deaths being children. My heart goes out to the people of Oklahoma City. The pictures of the citizens shows people in shock, understandable given the devastation caused by the tornado.

They are reporting the tornado as being three kilometres wide with winds up to 320 kilometres per hour. I can't even begin to imagine or comprehend this monster.

I feel certain that all the citizens of Australia feel for the people of Oklahoma City and offer prayers for all, especially those who have lost family and friends.

As terrible as the destruction was, they are now revising the deathtoll DOWN to 24. I guess they double counted some of the deaths in the mayhem afterwards.

Terrible loss of life and property though.


-DallanC

Scary times for sure.. Thoughts are with them...

the news said that there are a lot of children drowned in the basement of the school after taking shelter there.

Sad..

It will be interesting to catch up on the news tonight. Would be good news if only 24 parished. Especially with two schools and a hospital taking direct hits.

Ok'ies have a lot of spirit. Here is one of the pictures that come out of that mess. His response to the fireman was "Help all the others, I’ll be fine right here. I am too old to get too excited at my age"

Just saw this gentleman with his rocking chair on the evening news. They said this is the only possesion he found left from his former abode.

the pictures are hard to comprehend the scale of it just blows the mind. hole streets swept away.

from news reports:

Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the debris of homes, schools and a hospital after the tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City region with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour, leaving a trail of destruction 17 miles long and 1.3 miles wide.

Plaza Towers Elementary was one of five schools in its path. "They (rescuers) literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out," Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said. "They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them."

The National Weather Service upgraded its calculation of the storm's strength on Tuesday, saying it was a rare EF5, the most powerful ranking on the Enhanced Fujita Scale

The last time a giant twister tore through the area, on May 3, 1999, it killed more than 40 people and destroyed thousands of homes. That tornado also ranked as an EF5.

While Oklahoma Emergency Management's Lojka said a flyover of the affected area on Tuesday showed 2,400 homes damaged or obliterated, with an estimated 10,000 people affected, the death toll was lower than might have been expected.

The toll was also a fraction of that of the 2011 twister in Joplin, Missouri, which killed 161 people.

In the hours following the storm, many more people were feared dead. At one point, the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office said the toll could rise as high as 91, but on Tuesday officials said 24 bodies had been recovered, down from a previous tally of 51.

"There was a lot of chaos," said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer for the medical examiner.

Some ascribe the relatively low number of dead residents discovered in Moore, home to 55,000 people, to the fact many locals have small "storm safe" shelters, basically a concrete hole in the garage floor with a sliding roof that locks.